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conchis comments on Deleting paradoxes with fuzzy logic - Less Wrong
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Comments (70)
Silas, a suggestion which you can take or leave, as your prefer.
This comment makes some sound points, but IMHO, in an unnecessarily personal way. Note the consistent use of the critical "you"-based formulations ("you just decided", "you come up with", "you propose", "you missed that"). Contrast this with Christian's comment, which is also critical, but consistently focuses on the ideas, rather than the person presenting them.
I have no idea why you feel the need to throw about thinly-veiled accusations that Warrigal is basically an idiot. (How else could he or she possibly have missed all these really obvious problems you so insightfully spotted?). Maybe you don't even intend them as such (though I'm baffled as to how could you possibly miss the overtones of your statements when they're so freakin' OBVIOUS). But the tendency to belittle others' intellectual capacities (rather than just their views) is one that you've exhibited on a number of prior occasions as well, and one that I think you would do well to try to overcome - if only so that others will be more receptive to your ideas.
PS. For the avoidance of doubt, that final para was intended in part as an ironic illustration of the problem. I'm not that un-self-aware.
PPS. Also, I didn't vote you down.
I agree that I've been many times unnecessarily harsh. But seriously, take a look at a random sampling of my posts and see how many of them are that way. It's not actually as often as you're trying to imply.
I do it because some people cross the threshold from "honest mistake" into "not even trying". In which case they need to know that too, not just the specifics of their error. Holding someone's hand through basic explanations is unfair to the people who have to do the work that the initial poster should have done for themselves.
And FWIW, if anyone ever catches me in that position -- where I screw up so bad that I didn't even appear to be thinking when I posted -- I hope that you treat me the same way, so that I learn not just my specific error, but why it was so easily avoidable. Arguably, that's the approach you just took.
Now a suggestion for you: your comment was best communicated by private message. Why stage a degrading, self-congratulatory "intervention"? Unless...
What's obvious to one person is seldom obvious to everybody else. There are things that seem utterly trivial to me that lots of people don't get immediately, and many more things that seem utterly trivial to others that I don't get immediately. That doesn't mean that any of us aren't trying, or deserve to be belittled for "not getting it". (I can't quite tell if your second paragraph is intended as justification or merely explanation; apologies if I've guessed wrongly).
It wasn't intended to be self-congratulatory; it was intended to make a point. Oh well. As for being degrading, I was attempting, via irony, to help you to understand the impact of a particular style of comment. It's a style that I would normally try to avoid, and I agree that in general such comments might be better communicated privately, and certainly in a less inflammatory way. (In this case, it honestly didn't occur to me to send a private message. Not sure what I would have done if it had. I think the extent to which others' here agree or disagree with my point is useful information for us both, but information that would be lost if the correspondence were private.)
I'm not sure what you think I was trying to imply, but I had two specific instances in mind (other than this one), and honestly wasn't trying to imply anything beyond that.
You're preaching to the choir here. But when Warrigal announces some grand new idea, but just shrugs of even the importance of spelling out its implications, that's well beyond "not noticing something that's obvious to others" and into the territory of "not giving a s---, but expecting people to do your work for you."
Right. I "got" that the first time around (even before PS), thanks. That wasn't what I was referring to as "degrading"; it was actually pretty clever. Good work!
The degrading bit was where you do the internet equivalent of calling someone out in public, and then going through your accumulated list of their flaws, so anyone else who doesn't like the resident "bad guy" (guy who actually says what everyone else isn't willing to take the karma hit for) can join the pile-on.
Sure, because what you were trying to accomplish (self-promotion, "us vs. them")wouldn't have been satisfied by a private message, so of course it's not going to occur to you.
Other people seem to manage to PM me when I'm out of line (won't name names here). But that's generally because they're actually interested in improving my posting, not in grandstanding.
I see no "accumulated list of [your] flaws" in what conchis has posted here. I see some comments on what you said on this particular occasion; and I see, embedded in something that (as you say you understood, and I'm sure you did) was deliberately nasty in style in order to make a point, the claim that you've exhibited the same pathology elsewhere as is on display here. No accumulated list; a single flaw, and even that mentioned only to point up the distinction between criticizing what someone has written and criticizing them personally.
Also: You're being needlessly obnoxious; please desist. I am saying this in public rather than by PM because what I am trying to accomplish is (some small amount of) disincentive for other people who might wish to be obnoxious themselves. I am interested in improving not only your posting but LW as a whole.
And, FWIW, so far as I can tell I have no recollection of your past behaviour on LW, and in particular I am not saying this because I "don't like" you.
I'm willing to apologise for publicly calling you out. While I'm still not totally convinced that PMing would have been optimal in this instance, it was a failing on my part not to have considered it at all, and I'm certainly sorry for any hurt I may have caused.
I'm also sorry that you seem to have such a poor impression of me that you can't think of any way to explain my behaviour other than self-promotion and grandstanding. Not really big on argumentative charity are you?
Apology accepted! :-)
I apologize for loading up on the negative motives I attributed to you. I appreciate your feedback, I would just prefer it not be done in a way that makes a spectacle of it all.
Apology likewise accepted! ;)